Then came the insurrection in 1715, and David Deans's horror for the revival of the Popish and prelatical faction reconciled him greatly to the government of King George, although he grieved that that monarch might be suspected of a leaning unto Erastianism.

In short, moved by so many different considerations, he had shifted his ground at different times concerning the degree of freedom which he felt in adopting any act of immediate acknowledgment or submission to the present government, which, however mild and paternal, was still uncovenanted, and now he felt himself called upon, by the most powerful motive conceivable, to authorise his daughter's giving testimony in a court of justice, which all who have been since called Cameronians accounted a step of lamentable and direct defection.

The voice of nature, however, exclaimed loud in his bosom against the dictates of fanaticism; and his imagination, fertile in the solution of polemical difficulties, devised an expedient for extricating himself from the fearful dilemma, in which he saw, on the one side, a falling off from principle, and, on the other, a scene from which a father's thoughts could not but turn in shuddering horror.
"I have been constant and unchanged in my testimony," said David Deans; "but then who has said it of me, that I have judged my neighbour over closely, because he hath had more freedom in his walk than I have found in mine?
I never was a separatist, nor for quarrelling with tender souls about mint, cummin, or other the lesser tithes.

My daughter Jean may have a light in this subject that is hid frae my auld een--it is laid on her conscience, and not on mine--If she hath freedom to gang before this judicatory, and hold up her hand for this poor castaway, surely I will not say she steppeth over her bounds; and if not"-- He paused in his mental argument, while a pang of unutterable anguish convulsed his features, yet, shaking it off, he firmly resumed the strain of his reasoning--"And if not--God forbid that she should go into defection at bidding of mine! I wunna fret the tender conscience of one bairn--no, not to save the life of the other." A Roman would have devoted his daughter to death from different feelings and motives, but not upon a more heroic principle of duty..